Some really good points/analysis. Thank you.
On the other hand, when you did deeper, there's almost always a logic to it.
So, there was a logic there - these people appeared to be control freaks, but all it boiled down to was they were folks with a limited range of responsibilities and if those got eroded, they'd be out of a job. I think that applies to many assistants and secretaries in these sorts of situations. Many don't have job security (I saw one gov't dept that was obligated by their own codes to hire a secretary after she'd worked in the same job for at least 6 months, but they kept 'rewriting' the contract every 6 months so it was 'a new contract' ... change a word here or there, add or remove a cosmetic duty.... basically cheating their own system to avoid hiring someone full time).
Yes, I don't know how much they exist elsewhere or if they're called something different, but much is made here of "Zero Hours" contracts.
they're great for students just wanting to pick up some work when they can, but are really terrible for long term workers needing real jobs who don't get security/holiday/pension etc. In this time of lockdown with redundancy and furloughing, those workers are particularly vulnerable.
Even university research is like that - competition for grants has (in some places) led to poisonings, stabbings, and other how-could-that-happen scenarios. When we take highly driven people and put their futures that they've worked so long for at risk, sometimes they do crazy things to try to protect it.
Absolutely
The sad part is most of this could be avoided if businesses treated employees as assets and not liabilities.
Of course, if these sorts of hijinks in corporations, gov't depts, or in academic settings are useful to stress players in a game, then that's making some sort of weak lemonade out of a real world misfortune.
Yes, I tried to capture some of this in _Ashfall_ with the six academics all having drivers that might or might not bring them into conflict with other players.
I really really thought this would be of niche interest at TravCon and that whoever signed up would go through it because it was there, but not much else. It turned out, that in both the slots I ran it, it seemed to really touch a chord and the players really ran with it and their general 'academicness'. In fact, at one point, as I think I've reported in an AAR, I found two players in a break from the game, sitting over their page long outline for the paper they - sorry, their characters - were writing! That's why there's two sequels which, as far as I can tell, were equally enjoyed.
But that reminds me. Now a couple of other large pressures of the week are over with, I must get back to getting Generation X ready for publication... just the thing for a rainy weekend. ("April showers" - after a very dry month - have just hit with avengeance).
have a good weekend everyone
tc